New Apple TV 4K announced, launches September 22nd for $179- Apple introduced the Apple TV 4K with support for HDR10 and DolbyVision. The new Apple TV runs on an A10X processor with a new tvOS. And Major studios, exclusing Disney, will make 4K movies available in iTunes for the same price as HD and Apple will upgrade previous purchases. The TV app is coming to seven new countries starting with Canada and Australia. Apple is also adding live news and sports to the TV app. The new Apple TV is available with 32GB for $179 and 64 GB for $199 for pre-order September 15 shipping September 22.

WSJ: Discovery, AMC and Viacom try a sports-free streaming bundle- The Wall Street Journal reports that Discovery Communications, Viacom Inc., A+E Networks, AMC Networks, and Scripps Networks Interactive are teaming up to launch a sports-free streaming service. The expectation is it will cost $20 a month. College-oriented streaming service Philo will provide the technology for the platform.

Hulu reportedly plans to spend around $2.5 billion on programming this year- Variety reports that Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins told an audience in New York City that Hulu plans to spend $2.5 billion on content this year. That’s less than Netflix’s $6 billion and Amazon’s predicted $4.5 billion but more than Apple’s $1 billion. If you’re keeping track. Hulu has about 12 million subscribers next to Amazon’s 80 million and Netflix’s 100 million.

Sling TV is now giving away digital antennas to those who prepay for its service- Sling announced two new bundles. If you prepay for two months of service you get a free Winegard indoor antenna. Prepay for three months and pay an additional $70 and you get the antenna plus an adapter and Sling’s AirTV Player which integrates over-the-air channels into Sling TV. Sling will verify you live in an area that can get OTA channels.

Dispatches from the Front

Hi there, Brian, Tom and Bryce!

In May I recorded a show about film franchises and late sequels. ...one of our guests who works doing PR for some film distribution companies mentioned that he already knows who is going to own the franchise for the upcoming sequels after Sony leaves.

This falls under the "people familiar with the matter" category. Long story short: the rights go to 20th Century Fox. They already have the distribution rights for home video (BD, DVD) since 2002 so that's the main reason they are up front of everybody else in the race for The Bond, besides any extra deals that they have been negociating.

However (and this is very interesting) since both Amazon and Apple are apparently on the race for the rights of the franchise, I wonder if the original plans have changed with a better offering. Video Streaming and Digital Sales have a stronger arm with any of those companies. Way stronger than Fox. This makes me think that perhaps they could acquire the rights if they make the right proposal to Barbara Broccoli, but since they already have a stablished bond (pun intended) with Fox, I doubt it.

You can see the video with the interview here and the comment from Jaime is at the 1:42:00 timecode. It's all in Spanish and unfortunatelly there are no subtitles available. That's the video for our Patreons so if you want to link it, please use the Patreon Post instead.

- Dan

Howdy Brian, Tom, Bryce, and Roberto:Enjoyed the discussion in Cordkillers #186 about the Multi-cultural approach of Netflix.

I am a big fan of Japanese Anime as I watch Crunchyroll and Funimation and more. Been a fan of Anime since the 70s. Unfortunately, Anime still suffers from prejudice which is not deserved because many people still associate Anime with sexy fanservice and violence. Many Anime contain parody and often reference other anime even with cross-overs with characters in other anime animation. So the new title "Neo Yokio" seems to be a typical style for Anime. Parody is very common in Japanese Anime.

...

I am very happy that Netflix is expanding it's Anime offerings and even producing original Anime titles. It may not appeal to some people, but there are many Anime fans out there like me.

Love Cordkillers! Keep up the Great Work!

- Michael

Tom and Brian,I think you're underestimating the number of people who use Kodie on a Fire TV Stick. This topic comes up all the time on our neighborhood Facebook page and based on the number of people who brag about owning one I would say about 10% of my neighbors have one (so about 50 to 100 households).I don't think they realize it's pirating or at least they have convinced themselves it's not becuase they agure that since they bought it from a vendor it must be legal (with that agruement all the pot I bought and smoked in high school must have been legal too).They talk about how nice it was to watch the fight or big game for free but I don't think they realize it's piracy since they are using an app and stream, like Popcorn Time, and not going to some shady site to download something.

I really do have a friend who has the Fire Stick with all the "free" stuff, and he's actually made fun of me for being a cord cutter without one. He bought the Stick from Amazon and sent it to a guy who loaded Kody and all the extensions onto it. Bottom line, it's crap. Live streams were incredibly low quality (like RealPlayer in 2002 low quality) and they kept buffering even over our other friend's gigabit Comcast, and movies were mostly guerrilla-cam or Blu-Ray rips with GIANT Korean subtitles. I stated my "it's crap" opinion to him, and his response was "Who cares? It's free!" - which comes from a guy who makes six figures. Personally, I would rather spend my money on better quality legal versions of content, whether it's a subscribing to a service or renting/buying a digital copy of a show or movie. Anyway, love the show.

- Joel

I know it's not exactly related to the conversation, but I've found a fairly comfortable setup for over-the-air TV in my house.